Mr Blue

Perhaps not content with their standard anti-social activities, it seems that more and more criminals are angling for respectability by publishing their autobiographies--luridly bragging about their endeavours and romanticising their misdeeds. Certainly, there is a morbid fascination to be gained but if the recollections of Edward Bunker are anything to go by, the reality of a criminal mind truly is far stranger (and more compelling) than fiction.

Known to modern audiences as Mr. Blue in Quentin Tarantino's ultra-hip crime flick Reservoir Dogs, Bunker became the youngest ever inmate of the notorious San Quentin Prison at 17-years-old. He spent the next 18 years of his life in prison and effectively wrote his way to freedom. Mr Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade details his early life: roaming the city streets a product of a broken home, his fearsome prison experiences, his associations with the likes of Tennessee Williams and his spell as a fugitive. It culminates with the publishing of his first novel No Beast So Fierce, which Tarantino regarded as one of the finest crime novels written. There is a deep cynicism to Bunker's writing (who could blame him?) but it is overridden by a hardened optimism that you will come to respect. He expertly details the ferocity of prison life, especially his experiences at Folsom, where he witnessed savage race riots: "In a world absolutely integrated ... the cell offered no safety ... racial hatred was malevolent and intractable."Mr Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade is not a tale of a man revelling in his dubious abilities. Rather, it is a hard-as-nails narrative of someone trying to go straight in a world that won't let him but ultimately uses his writing skills as a redemptive tool to "make a lotus grow from the mud." Given the vast, violent odds he faced, miraculously it did grow in a most storming fashion. --Danny Graydon